


Reprieve

by Lillian



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-30
Updated: 2010-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-09 05:45:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillian/pseuds/Lillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war lasts longer than anyone expected. Harry needs to rest every once in a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reprieve

**Author's Note:**

> AU Harry's 20 and still searching for Horcruxes.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I'm making no money of their use.

Luna works as a waitress in a Muggle cafe three blocks away from her and Neville's tiny, messy flat. Harry's early today, so he goes straight there, sits by the window and waits for Luna to notice him.

Luna looks as well as could be expected. She's wearing too wide jeans (Neville's), a knobbly purple sweater and boots that look like stuffed badgers. Before it would have been the only thing Harry noticed about her, but now her clothes are much less important than the way her hair sways behind her as she makes her way between the tables. The sweater's neck is stretched, pulled a little to the side, showing an inch of smooth shoulder and the delicate indentation of her collarbone.

She sees him finally and Harry gets one of her rare wide smiles.

"Oh, hello Harry," she greets him as she always does, as if she's surprised to see him. Harry wishes he could tell her he's not going anywhere without saying the actual words - he could be wrong, with Luna he could always be wrong, and he's not willing to take that much of a risk just yet.

"So, what's good?" he asks, the distraction meant for him more than for her.

"The caramel beetle fairy buns."

"But you don't have any?" He's been having sex with Luna for half a year and is just about starting to make sense of the way her mind works.

"No," Luna answers, serenely.

"When do you get off work?"

"In 43 minutes." She's already reaching for the chain around her neck, pulling it off. "You can let yourself in. Neville's at Hannah's till Monday."

She puts the skin-warm keys in his hand and bends to kiss him on the cheek. Her lips leave a phantom tingle on his skin, all the way to the street.

~ ~ ~

 

Luna's living room is empty except for Barnaby the hamster, who gives Harry a dirty look from his blanket nest on the sofa and goes back to nibbling a carrot. Harry ignores him and feeds the plants by the window the half sandwich he has in his pocket, feelers scrabbling at the wrapper for a piece of the ham.

He makes his way to Luna's room, toes off his shoes and stretches on the bed. It's soft and smells like Luna and a full night's sleep has been a luxury lately. Or not lately, more for the last three years, ever since he left Hogwarts, stupid enough to think he'd have found all the Horcruxes in a year.

He'll close his eyes only for a minute, Harry thinks, just until he hears the front door open.

~ ~ ~

 

He wakes up in the dark, with only a sliver of light coming from under the door. He stumbles groggily out of the room, dizzy with sleep.

Luna is in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, wearing white-and-blue striped pyjama bottoms and not much else. She nods to Harry in the mirror, completely unselfconscious.

Harry slips behind her, brushes her hair aside to kiss her neck, the skin behind her ear. He can see her breasts in the mirror, small and pale, the nipples, dark pink, pebbled with the cold, and can't resist reaching one hand around to thumb the small hard nub.

The brush clatters on the sink when Luna sets it down. She leans back against him and for a moment they stand perfectly still, Luna cradled in Harry's arms. Luna's face looks calm, far away even, but in the harsh bathroom light Harry can see her pupils gaping wide, the thin silver rim of the iris looking darker, hard and metallic and unnatural.

Then Luna shifts forward to rinse her mouth and wash her hands, and by the time she's finished she looks like Luna again. She wraps her arms around Harry's neck and says, "you can go back to sleep if you want," magnanimous, and Harry laughs, a jagged, unpractised sound, because sleep is the last thing on his mind.

~ ~ ~

 

Harry is moving inside her, rocking in deep, and Luna is warm, so warm, and Harry is close. His face is pressed against Luna's neck, feeding his moans into her skin, wrecked and broken. He leans on his elbow, pushes up to look at her.

Luna's eyes are half-closed, vacant, the way she goes sometimes. Harry forces himself to stop moving, muscles trembling with the effort of keeping still, and presses one palm to her cheek. Luna blinks, once, slowly, eyelashes throwing shadows on her cheeks in the light coming from the window.

"Stay with me, please stay with me, okay," Harry whispers, and kisses her, clumsy, just their open mouths pressed together, but it's enough.

Later, when Luna is asleep, a dark lean shape under the blankets, Harry skims his fingers up the inside of her thigh, and tucks this moment in his mind, locks the memory away for when he needs it.

~ ~ ~

 

In the honest morning light Luna kisses a line along Harry's lower lip, softly, from one corner to the other.

"I like your mouth when you wake up. It's not so thin, it doesn't look like a wound," she says, dreamily, and kisses him again, open and quick.

"I love your skin, you have amazing skin, the best ever," Harry answers, babbles really, thankful that Luna doesn't understand, or at least pretends not to, what he means.

~ ~ ~

 

It's Luna's turn to make breakfast. Today it's poached eggs. Mostly eggs.

"Why are the yolks green?" Harry asks warily.

"I haven't been able to make eggs taste like melon and keep the yolks yellow," Luna answers, absent-mindedly, nose buried in a book about barnacle transfiguration, and for a moment last night seems impossibly unreal.

Harry eats his melon-flavoured eggs and resolutely doesn't wonder whether Luna has so much as a passing thought about him when he's not around, or about the conversation with Neville about Harry's intentions three months ago, _if you're only using her to make yourself feel something, Merlin help me Harry, I'll_, and how depressingly off the mark it had been.

"I was wondering whether I could catch a bottle-necked chimneyhopper on the roof," Luna says suddenly.

"What?"

"Last night. That's why I got distracted."

Harry hadn't meant to ask.

"You realise there aren't any fireplaces in the building," he answers after a moment, as if that's the only problem with the plan to catch a non-existent animal.

"Yes, but I could lure some with soot. They do love it, you know."

~ ~ ~

 

They wash the dishes together, Luna's long legs twitching nervously, her knee touching his from time to time. She tells him about the cold Mr. Wilkes from next door has (Luna has tea once a week with him, watches the same old pictures of his grandchildren and seems to enjoy it), and that the girl from the flat just below has a Wrackspurt infestation because she never hears when Luna says hello (she asked Harry once if Luna was on acid and tried to chat him up), and how well Luna's new gnome-attracting potion is selling (extremely well - it's a riot to give people you dislike a gnome infestation, apparently).

Harry doesn't talk about anything important, and Luna doesn't ask him to, which is exactly what he needs. Today, he doesn't tell her about stealing Dark Arts books with Hermione last week, or about clearing a mass of snakes with a cleaver to get to an old tomb, or about bumping into Ginny in France, and how her face drew in something like disgust when she saw him, a milder version of the expression she'd worn when she'd caught him sucking off Blaise Zabini, or how she still doesn't seem to believe he's dating Luna, as if one fuck with a man means he's forbidden to like women ever again.

That's the difference between him and Ginny now - she still sees the world in simple terms, while the war has long stripped such illusions from Harry. The only easy, simple thing in his life now is Luna, and he doesn't know if that's because she doesn't care about his issues, or because she doesn't care about him.

~ ~ ~

 

Luna hugs him at the door for a long time, chin digging sharply at his shoulder, and when she draws back Harry lets himself ask, "Luna, are you all right? Are you-- How are you getting on?"

"Well, my left elbow hurts, but otherwise I'm fine," she answers earnestly. She's not lying and Harry feels the familiar mixture of relief and uselessness at the reminder that she doesn't need a hero, that she doesn't need him, that she is perfectly able to take care of herself.

"See you next week," Harry says and leaves fast before she can return the question, and hopes at least this is a promise he can keep.


End file.
